Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Below is our latest entry in MGoBlog's Blogpoll and the reasoning behind some of our votes...

* While Michigan or USC could claim the #2 spot, I (although not Benny), give the slight edge to the Trojans. Their game against ND was impressive. More impressive than Michigan's victory over the Irish? Not at all. But based on the totality of the season, SC gets a very slight bump to the #2 spot.

* We almost dropped Florida due to our No Whining By Coaches rule which has been repeatedly violated by Urban Meyer. However, we'll keep them at #4 for now and hope the Hogs fix this problem for us.

* LSU is playing great ball now and looked impressive in its victory over Arkansas.

* Wisconsin could be the most untested #7 in the history of college football.

* And we feel for Sooner fans. That replay debacle in Eugene looks ever larger now.

* Might have ranked WF too high. But, we don't look at our previous polls (most of the time) when we do our poll. We simply try to rank the teams from 1-25 at the current time.

* Sorry WVU, you no longer get credit for last January's Sugar Bowl and must now be ranked solely on the 2006 season. Oops.

Have a little more courage next time and leave Michigan #2. Don't reward USC for beating Notre Dame by a smaller margin than Michigan. Losing to the #1 team is a lot better than losing to Oregon State.

Mich should be at #3....SC should be at #2...Forget the loss, look at the schedule of other teams. As we all know SC played a lot tougher non-conf schedule than Mich or even Florida. Teams shouldn't be rewarded for playing patsies like Central Mich or Western Carolina

Oregon State over Cal? Cal, who beat them in Corvallis 41-13? Notre Dame over Cal? Care to compare the scores of their games with their common opponents, UCLA and USC? Believe me, that doesn't look good for Notre Dame, especially when the Cal-USC game was still up in the air going into the fourth quarter while the USC-Notre Dame game wasn't.

It's interesting how every UM fan here and on GBW only point to two things when comparing UM to USC.

1. Head to head results against Notre Dame.

2. Comparing their one loss

Michigan wins #2 hands down

#1 means NOTHING otherwise quite a few teams could claim that they are better than Michigan for beating Ball State more handily (some on the road). You can't compare common opponents in College. It doesn't work. Remember this is the same advice you gave OSU fans when we were comparing our dominance over our common opponents (it was pretty substantial).

What's interesting to me though is that UM fans simply ignore the comparison of the quality of each teams' wins. USC played hands down the toughest OOC schedule in the country. They beat the finalists in the SEC and Big 12 Championship games, Pac 10 runner up Cal, and their 2 main rivals (assuming they beat UCLA). Michigan beat one of their main rivals (ND) and easily the most untested top 10 team in the history of the BCS in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has played NOBODY except UM and lost to them. Other than that, an overrated Iowa team, an overrated Penn State team and the rest of the little 9.

So let's be honest when comparing the two teams. You both crushed ND. Michigan has the better loss. USC has the better wins.

I'm not saying which of these two holds more water, I'm just saying let's not be ignorant and completely leave this part of the argument out of the equation.

Nice post, Jerry Palm. Said most of what I was going to say. People piss on Charlie Weis because his only real claim to fame is that he barely lost to the best team in the nation, but then say Michigan is better than USC because THEY barely lost to the best team in the nation. Hey guys, maybe if you had played a D1 schedule, there would be a couple more screwups in there?

Also, Texas is too high. They have an identical record to A&M and just got whipped like little bitches by the Ags on their home turf. Correct this. Thanks.

I guess it's a matter of opinion, but many people would consider a 34-26 survival at home against Ball State "shitting the bed".

You're not looking at the big picture here, Ungar. In its totality, USC's body of work this season is simply more impressive than Michigan's. And I utterly despise USC. Their "back-to-back" championships, when they didn't win the first one, pisses me off. Their second "championship" pisses me off, because they beat an OU team that didn't belong in the game to begin with, when Auburn was clearly the best team in the nation. Their "Pete Carroll is a coaching genius" bandwagon pisses me off, because Pete Carroll was a complete disaster in the NFL and is pretty much a non-talent (except for recruiting). But you gotta hand it to them: they've knocked off a lot of quality competition, and suffered only one lapse all season (L against OrSt). I'm willing to forgive that; they belong in the game.

I can agree that the margin, going by the season results, is razor thin between USC and UM. However, watching both teams with my own 2 eyes, I honestly think UM is the only team that can keep up with OSU. USC is good but I think OSU beats them by 10.

I think UM is the true #2 team in the country, and if OSU wins in Glendale and UM also wins, then that's where we'll end up.

Ungar Kelt, I like Michigan my daughter goes to Michigan, however putting them head to head with USC, you see a Ball State team that nearly beat Michigan at the big house, and you played Central Michigan, that is a killer for your strength of schedule. USC lost to Oregon State after being down 21, or 23 points in the 3rd quarter with around 30 seconds or so left in the game, came back and missed the 2 point conversion (because of a sucky play call if you ask me) and they played 9 conference games and 3 non conference. Arkansas, Nebraska, and Notre Dame, you reward teams for playing a strong schedule. I hear all of the time what if they were in the SEC, well USC is on the west coast and that' why they are probably in the PAC 10 but every SEC team I've seen them play in the last 5 years or so they have beat, and pretty soundly at that and for the good ole Auburn team a couple of years ago that was undefeated, USC had beat that team the last 2 years in a row one of them being Matt Leinarts first game as a starter at Auburn and they beat them 23-0 and oh yeah Auburn was ranked #1 preseason that year! Sorry to go on a rant but let's look at the defenses, Michigan has a really good defense and some great linebackers, but USC has about 7 linebackers that would start anywhere and a true freshman safety that is 6'4" around 230 and he's the reason that Rhema McKnight and the boys were dropping the ball like crazy Saturday and Kevin Ellison #4 who decleated Desean Jackson coming across the middle from Cal and you can bet Notre Dame knew they were coming. I think USC matches up easily with Ohio State, they are a predicatable team and they have speed at every position if they Beat UCLA it isn't even a question who should play. Any team that schedules a Divion 1-IIa team and has a loss shouldn't play in the NCS game. And frankly I'm not impressed with Ohio States schedule if Illinois can play with them and Cincinatti who played them tight they can definitely be beat.

Ungar, the Pac-10 is maybe 1/10th of a titty-hair less impressive than the Big-10 this year, actually, but that's another issue altogether, since they also play a non-conference schedule (already mentioned several times) that included actual football programs. And when you try to re-state the "big picture", you're simply scaling everything down to your one little hobby-horse, soapbox argument that Michigan's loss was more impressive than USC's.

Bringing up the Ball St game as an example of Michigan's weakness is indicative of either a person that emotionally despises Michigan to the point of blindness or that is careless & ignorant when it comes to analyzing college football. One last time - Michigan was up 31-12 and put their 2nd string defense in at the end of the 3rd quarter. When Michigan plays in big games, they leave the 1st string defense in the game for the entire 60 minutes. Please stop trying to distort the meaning of the Ball St game.

"Pac-10 is maybe 1/10th of a titty-hair less impressive than the Big-10 this year"

Really - how many PAC 10 teams are in the BCS top-10 this year? If USC is the PAC 10's Ohio St, who is the PAC 10's Michigan and Wisconsin? As usual, the PAC-10 is the PAC 1 - USC.

"little hobby-horse, soapbox argument that Michigan's loss was more impressive than USC's"

If USC had lost to Arkansas, Nebraska, or ND, I'd agree that it was a quality loss & they had a claim as the best 1-loss team. But Oregon St??? Sorry, call the Big-10 shit, at least Michigan didn't lose to the shit teams it played this year. Great teams don't stumble like USC did. If USC lost to Oregon St in week 11 or 12, no one would be talking about putting USC in the NC game. However, our blessedly short attention spans allow us to forget all but the last few weeks of the season.

I think UM is the true #2 team in the country, and if OSU wins in Glendale and UM also wins, then that's where we'll end up.

And the corollary is that if USC beats Ohio State then you're wrong. That's why they should be in the national championship game. As U-M alums (I'm also a Cal alum, so have many reasons to despise the Trojans), I think it's time to not be disappointed that we're going to the Rose Bowl to play LSU.

And yes, I saw Cal play both USC and Arizona St., The USC Cal game was tied going into the fourth quarter. Cal beat the living crap out of ASU, though I suspect you were thinking of University of Arizona, which was at full health for consecutive wins over WSU, Cal and Oregon, the first and third of which were on the road. Arizona was not healthy the entire rest of the year, and despite that, they only beat Cal on a couple bad PI calls. Surely Michigan fans can sympathize.

Follow the MZone

Subscribe To

The MZone-slash-MichiganZone.net-slash-MichiganZone.blogspot.com is in no way affiliated with the University of Michigan and/or U-M football in any way. If you thought it was, frankly I'm surprised you know how to use a computer.